Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 1.djvu/468



wagon box into a raft on which to cross and with a long rope establish a ferry. But the raft was swamped as its four occupants reached the opposite shore and the rope was lost. A messenger was sent to the nearest house for help and material for a raft. Captain Richards says:

“The wind was now blowing a terrific gale and the cold was intense, so that our wet clothing was frozen stiff upon us as we traveled up and down the banks of the swollen current in a vain search for a better place for the men to cross. When help and material for a raft came, so strong and cold was the wind, and so swift the current, filled with floating ice, that all of our efforts to build a raft failed. It was now dark and still growing colder, and the roar of the blinding storm so great that we could no longer hold communication with our companions on the other side. We were benumbed with cold, utterly exhausted, and three miles from the nearest cabin. We were powerless to aid our comrades, and could only try to save ourselves. It was a terrible walk in the face of the terrific blizzard, our clothes frozen, our feet freezing, and our strength gone. After wandering in the blinding storm until nine o’clock, we fortunately found the cabin. Here we passed a night that will never be obliterated from my memory. We gathered about the fire vainly trying to dry our frozen clothing. We had no blankets, and the piercing wind was driving through every crevice of the cabin, and we walked the floor in the most intense anxiety over the fate of our companions, left on the banks of the creek, exposed to the fury of the blizzard, without shelter, food or fire. All through the night we kept looking out on the wild storm in hopes it would cease, but the cold ever grew more intense, and the wind howled more fiercely, and no one slept. We knew that Carpenter, Stratton, Stevens and Wright were men endowed with courage equal to any emergency, and we trusted they would find some way to keep the men from perishing; still a harrowing fear would come over us that we should in the morning find them frozen to death. Terrible visions of their fate tortured us through the long hours of the night, and with the first dawn of light Buncombe, Smith, Mason and I were wading through the drifts toward Cylinder Creek. The mercury was now 28 degrees below zero, and the blizzard at its wildest fury. Mason gave out and sunk down in the drifts. I got him back to the cabin and soon overtook the others. Strong ice was formed on the creek from the shore, and we hurried over it to the main channel where the current was so swift that it was too weak to bear us up. We could go no farther, could not see across for the drifting snow, and could hear no sound on the other side in answer to our loud shouts. Our faces and hands were now freezing, and we had to return to the cabin and wait until the ice should be strong enough to support us. Toward night